Notices

Events DiaryNew on the website is the Events Diary page. The calendar shows the upcoming Summer Events, and will also show any other events of photographic interest. If you have any Event suggestions, please let the Chairman know.

TCC Membership FormExisting members, please download and complete this form to advise us of your contact details or to amend your existing details. Please hand the completed form back to Martin Taylor. If you are not able to print off the form ask Martin for a paper copy. Many thanks for your cooperation.

These past few months, the club has excelled with speakers which have entertained and informed members.

The excellent John Bebbington FRPS with his nature talk on plants and insects provided an excellent talk which encouraged the audience to join him in his newly created Macro Group for members.

A completely different speaker came next, Gordon Apsland, a creative and altered reality expert, who gave many ideas on searching for uniqueness. He extolled the value of using layer masks and gave some valuable tips which will come in very useful to members!

Mark Mumford FRPS carried on in a similar vein with his surreal photography and manipulation talk. A graphic designer by trade he uses his skills with photoshop to create wonderful and sometimes controversial images.

Ken Holland ARPS DPAGB talk on Looking at Photographs gave members ideas on how to improve their understanding of taking and the perusing of photographs.

Adrian Herrring ARPS DPAGB and Vanessa Herring LRPS produced many images of their travels abroad.

Club member Tom Wielkopolski created a delightful speech about how he stalked and photographed the wild Otter’s in the Shetland Isles, he produced some stunning photograph’s of the Otter’s plus a Hare and an excellent one of Arctic Terns fighting amongst many others.

These have been amongst a wonderful collection of speakers that have been on offer throughout the club’s year!

Linda Wevill FRPS DPAGB EFIAP presented a huge number of prints for her talk Before and After My Fellowship. The first images shown were her successful ones for the DPAGB distinction which were mainly landscapes. The next was her successful FRPS panel, being an ardent sailor she chose pulleys and rings associated with sailing as her subject and blended them with images of the sea.

Linda often copies an image to make two layers, taking the clarity down on the top one and then bringing focused parts of the bottom layer through the top layer, finishing off with a white layer to soften the whole effect. She does this to great effect. Another tip was to take part of a picture, for example a petal, and stretch it over an image, using transform in Photoshop, to create a layer of colour; you can then use Opacity in the layer to bring the underlying image through. Another tip was the use of textured layers, using a layer mask to bring out the bits you want can be very effective. A very entertaining evening by Linda left members yearning to see more of her stunning images.

The 9th February talk was The Digital Monochrome Print by Andy Beal FRPS. Andy stressed that the camera was just a tool to record an idea. He produced two prints of the same image, one printed in the flat raw format which had no processing and one after processing showing what can be achieved. Andy was full of tips to improve the taking and processing of monochrome prints, such as think about texture, contrast and brightness. When using a wide angle lens fill the foreground, the wider the angle the nearer you need to get to the foreground object (eg boulder). Expose for highlights process the shadows. Think about the lighting for the type of print you want to make. Photograph the light and not the landscape and when processing, lighten what you want to look at and darken everything else. In the second half of the evening Andy demonstrated various methods, on the computer, of how he processed and achieved his dramatic monochrome images.

Birds in Flight was the title of an excellent talk given by John Crabb on February 2. John started off his love of bird photography by utilising a piece of drainpipe to attach a point and shoot camera to a Digiscope. He then progressed to a Canon 7D and a 400mm f5.6 prime lens. The first half of the evening was about the birds in his garden. With his love of gadgets he decided to make a sensor that would trip the camera to photograph them in flight. John demonstrated the various types he made along his way to discovering the latest one of his that produced some really exquisite bird flight shots. He has even had some published in the Daily Mail! The second part of the evening was devoted to other wild birds from around the South West region. The evening sped by as members were so enthralled with all of John’s excellent photographs.

Open Results: First Caroline Briggs LRPS with View of Rain from Beer, second Roger Thomas with Boxing Day Walk, third Magdalena Ward with Aurelia. Highly Commended were Caroline Briggs LRPS with Craig and The Fourth Plinth, Ken Kedward with Lights, Camera…..but not much Action and George Reekie DPAGB with Blue Tit.